The Greater Good Science Center offers a plethora of information on this subject. In a white paper titled, “The Science of Gratitude” (2018), they outline several benefits to gratitude practice.

For the individual:

• increased happiness and positive mood
• more satisfaction with life
• less materialistic
• less likely to experience burnout
• better physical health
• better sleep
• less fatigue
• lower levels of cellular inflammation
• greater resiliency
• encourages the development of patience, humility, and wisdom

  The researchers analyzed their findings to figure out how gratitude has these effects. They determined that gratitude does four things:

  1. Gratitude disconnects us from toxic, negative emotions and the ruminating that often accompanies them. Writing a letter “shifts our attention” so that our focus is on positive emotions.
  2. Expressing gratitude helps us even if we don’t explicitly share it with someone. We’re happier and more satisfied with life because we completed the exercise.
  3. The positive effects of gratitude writing compound like interest. You might not notice the benefit of a daily or weekly practice, but after several weeks and months, you will.
  4. A gratitude practice trains the brain to be more in tune with experiencing gratitude — a positive plus a positive, equal more positives.

  Their findings echo research done by Emmons and many others.

  Bartlett & DeSteno (2006) found there is a positive relationship between kind, helpful behavior, and feeling grateful. In, “Gratitude and prosocial behavior: Helping when it costs you,” they discuss this connection in great detail. Throughout three studies they determined,

  • Gratitude facilitates helping behavior,
  • Grateful people help the people who helped them (benefactors) and strangers similarly, and
  • Reminding people who helped them (a benefactor) still increased helping behavior exhibited toward strangers. The reciprocity norm wasn’t a factor.

  Dickens and DeSteno (2018) found an association between self-control (patience) and gratitude. Grateful people delay future rewards to a higher degree than ungrateful people. The researchers point out that this has implications for more than one’s finances. Increasing levels of gratitude also could help people positively affect health-related behaviors.

  Counterpoints

  Not all the research supports positive outcomes. Sansone & Sansone (2010) highlight four studies that “temper the association between gratitude and wellbeing.”

  In, “Gratitude and hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing in Vietnam war veterans,” Kashdan and colleagues (2006) found that trait gratitude had a relationship with wellbeing, but only among participants with PTSD. Trait gratitude is defined as “an enduring personality characteristic that describes or determines an individual’s behavior across a range of situations” (APA, n.d.).

  Researcher Patricia Henrie (2006) explored the affects daily gratitude journaling has on wellbeing and adjusting to divorce. The study included middle-aged women, all of whom belonged to and practiced the beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).